Fire Mage Guide 5.0.5

Fire mage guide Level 90.
Introduction: Fire's Movement and sustain even with minimal gear makes it an excellent choice for any budding raider. It seems to be the most competitive spec when dealing with both "Patchwork" and "movement" fights. The playstyle is very similar to the way it was played from 4.3 onwards. However, much of the heavy RNG has been removed; it is still there, but the damage spread is far less.

Pyroblast!: is triggered after two successive crits on the boss from any combination of Fireball, Fostfire bolt, Scorch, Infernoblast and Pyroblast. Pyroblast! allows your next Pyroblast to be an instant cast, does not stack.

Combustion: Our Main DPS cooldown with a 45 cooldown and 10 second DoT, can be glyphed to have a 90 second cooldown nd 20 second DoT.

Stat priorities:

Hit + Expertise to 15% (5100)*

Haste to 12.5% (3056) [+5% from raid buff] - This assumes Glyph of Combustion OR

Haste to 15% (4052) [+5% from raid buff] - This assumes NO Glyph of Combustion**

- This allows for an extra tick of living bomb, pyroblast and glyph of combustion.

Glyph of Combustion: Tends to be more beneficial due to the nature of buff scaling at the start of the fight and in combination with timewarp/bloodlust.

Glyph of Fire Blast: Allows you to spread your Mage Bomb effects along with other DoTs

Suggested Talents:
Unfortunately there are some just flat out bad choices for fire.

Tier One:
Presence of Mind should only ever be taken on fights with near-zero movement, similarly Icy Flows should only be taken on fights with movement only every minute. This, leave us with scorch as our only real option. Scorch also has excellent synergy with fire as it also applies ignite and can trigger heating up/Pyroblast!.

Tier Two:
Blazing speed is not terribly useful in most fights, due to the fact we already have access to fast movement from blink and glyph of invisibility. therefore, ice barrier and temporal shield both of which are excellent choices remain.

I favour temporal shield in terms of allowing maximum DPS, as it is not on the global cooldown, therefore, can be macro'd in with another spell such as fireball. However, for pure mitigation of damage, I like ice barrier which is also why I favour it for progression.

Tier Three:
Pretty useless for raid encounters, however, ring of frost can be used to create a safety circle for healers to stand in and prevent adds from destroying them before tanks have a chance to pick them up. Frost jaw is also useful as a secondary ranged CC if poly-morph is on cool down

Tier Four:
All three are viable but i prefer cauterize as it allows for you to make a mistake, whist improved invisibility and cold snap rely on you actively preventing damage. Furthermore, Improved invisibility is also useful as an instant aggro dump if needed.

Tier Five:
I never use frost bomb, in terms of AoE and single target it is just on part with living bomb, however, the long cast time and haste modified cooldown makes it feel clunky. Nether tempest is just about the same as living bomb in terms of single target damage and way behind in terms of AoE, however it has one distinct advantage, living bomb must run its full duration to be worthwhile instead of fireball, where as nether tempest only has to be allows to run for 6-8 seconds to be beneficial so on fights like Elegon where you have to nuke down adds in this period of time nether tempest is slightly better. Which leaves living bomb my go to choice for both AoE and single target damage.

Tier Six:
A personal choice. For me; between rune of power and Inchater's ward. With invocation being viable in theory but not practice, there are almost no fights that allow for you to stand there for 6 seconds every 40 seconds on cool down with no repercussions. Rune of power is technically the best IF you never allow it to fall off and you rarely leave to rune on the ground, however, at least in Mogushan Vaults the fights have persistent movement, which leaves inchaters ward. This spell passively grants 6% damage and has decent mitigation, and since almost every fight has very predictable damage if you use deadly boss mods and such, you can regularly proc the 30% spell damage buff.

EDIT: If you can make invocation work for you with 90%+ uptime good for you. However, I still find the talent awkward and unplayable. But like I said personal choice.Rotation

1: Use combustion when off cool-down and there is both a pyroblast and ignite on the target. Aim to use Combustion when these dots are as large as possible without sacrificing the maximum number of times combustion could be used within the encounter, for example; If there is a 5 minute fight and you are using the glyphed version of this spell. You can only afford to wait 10 seconds between cooldowns IN TOTAL to use this ability to its maximum potential

2: Maintain your bomb spell:
- Living bomb should be refreshed either x<= 2seconds before the DoT expires or immediately after
- Nether Tempest should be refreshed as close to expiring as possible, put preferably before not after.
- Frost Orb should be used as often as possible.

3: Use Pyroblast! AKA instant Pyroblast.

*Pyroblast! does not stack
** Pyroblast! is triggered after two successive crits on the boss from any combination of Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Scorch, Inferno Blast and Pyroblast.

4: If you have the buff "Heating Up" cast Inferno Blast as your next spell is traveling towards the boss. Both Scorch and Fireball have a travel time so if you are fast and Inferno Blast is off cooldown you should regularly be able to use Pyroblast!.

5: Cast fireball, or Utilize a tier one talent ability if on the move.

* Not fire specific but:
6: Use Mirror Images as many times as possible throughout the fight. Alter Time:

Lastly alter time, the most ideal time to use this is during time warp, with Incanter's Ward's bonus damage and trinkets active with Pyroblast! useable, this doesn't exactly happen often. So I aim to save it for time warp with trinkets at the very least. BUT PLEASE NOTE buffs that occur in the 6 seconds after it is initially activated will be removed when triggered. This means you can cheat yourself out of timewarp and then gain the debuff... don't do that. also time warp does not reset cooldowns it merely acts to prolong buffs, and return you to the exact position and health you were when casting it.

If you have any suggestion or CONSTRUCTIVE feedback please let me know

[*]Hot Streak: is triggered after two successive crits on the boss from any combination of Fireball, Fostfire bolt, Scorch, Infernoblast and Pyroblast. Hot Streak allows your next Pyroblast to be an instant cast, does not stack.

Just a minor annoyance - it's not called Hot Streak. There is no ability in game called Hot Streak anymore, it's just called Pyroblast! now.

I know most people know what you are referring to, but new users won't.

Also as i noticed with the reason change to Reforgelite addon the author changed stat values to hit 180 crit 160 mastery 140 and haste 120. I later in my search for confirmation found that maxdps.com had the same values crit>mastery>haste and i find that really strange. and i sure hope your values are correct. but how sure are you ? :P

i have found it really hard to find any information of fresh quality info on both Ej and other sites around the web. so i really appreciate your work. since i recently came back to wow (from vanil/scc in tbc) i havent felt i had the time to learn how to work the sims yet my self.

According to your weights intelect is not double value of crit. so in a yellow socket would be better to gem pure crit.

In my experience alter time is really usefull for a first huge combustion. Use trinket, Get Pyroblast!, alter time, cast pyro, alter time, cast pyro (if lucky another pyro), combustion, profit!. After this, again when blood lust is used, of course.

Also as i noticed with the reason change to Reforgelite addon the author changed stat values to hit 180 crit 160 mastery 140 and haste 120. I later in my search for confirmation found that maxdps.com had the same values crit>mastery>haste and i find that really strange. and i sure hope your values are correct. but how sure are you ? :P

i have found it really hard to find any information of fresh quality info on both Ej and other sites around the web. so i really appreciate your work. since i recently came back to wow (from vanil/scc in tbh) i havent felt i had the time to learn how to work the sims yet my self.

Well Carline's math is a little wrong, because he assumed that the 5% haste buff from Spriests and boomies is 5% on your total so if you had 1000 haste before the buff you would have 1050 after.

This is incorrect, the 5% haste buff is the equivalent of 5% worth of haste OR 2125 Haste, as for the reforge numbers, this is the stat priorities that I am pretty sure with I would say 98% sure, these are the values that are supported by my own personal tests and over 1000000 iterations on several versions of simcraft. BUT it is only what? day 10 of the expo... I could be wrong. but I am pretty confident.

---------- Post added 2012-10-05 at 01:22 PM ----------

Originally Posted by blaxter

According to your weights intelect is not double value of crit. so in a yellow socket would be better to gem pure crit.

forgot a 5

---------- Post added 2012-10-05 at 01:24 PM ----------

Originally Posted by blaxter

According to your weights intelect is not double value of crit. so in a yellow socket would be better to gem pure crit.

forgot a 5; it is also important to remember that crit is not indefinetably scalable, where as int is. For example, the difference between 35% crit and 40% crit is not that huge, mainly due to how often you get to use infer blast. It will always be restricted to that 8 second cooldown, so you will not always be able to use EVERY fire crit to its greatest advantage.

I've played the first 5 of the 6 bosses in Mogu'Shan vaults and only had any issues at all with Invocation on the dogs, I think your evaluation of it is a little inaccurate.
Incanter's Ward is possibly stronger for the first three but I would hate to use it or Rune of Power on Spirit Kings and do not believe I could reliably get Incanter's Ward to proc when needed on Elegon.

I've played the first 5 of the 6 bosses in Mogu'Shan vaults and only had any issues at all with Invocation on the dogs, I think your evaluation of it is a little inaccurate.
Incanter's Ward is possibly stronger for the first three but I would hate to use it or Rune of Power on Spirit Kings and do not believe I could reliably get Incanter's Ward to proc when needed on Elegon.

You can get a proc every cooldown on elegon. It is super easy to, the adds do AOE the sparks to AOE third and second phase is persistent AoE. If you are not using inchanters... your doing it wrong.

Well Carline's math is a little wrong, because he assumed that the 5% haste buff from Spriests and boomies is 5% on your total so if you had 1000 haste before the buff you would have 1050 after.

This is incorrect, the 5% haste buff is the equivalent of 5% worth of haste OR 2125 Haste, as for the reforge numbers, this is the stat priorities that I am pretty sure with I would say 98% sure, these are the values that are supported by my own personal tests and over 1000000 iterations on several versions of simcraft. BUT it is only what? day 10 of the expo... I could be wrong. but I am pretty confident.

I'm not a huge theorycrafter, i normally just read guides like these and go from there. That being said I reforged to 3043 haste last night after reading that other thread and in last night's raid with the 5% buff i was at 12.52% haste, so 3043 seems to be the correct number to me.

You can get a proc every cooldown on elegon. It is super easy to, the adds do AOE the sparks to AOE third and second phase is persistent AoE. If you are not using inchanters... your doing it wrong.

The problem is that the buff does not last as long as the cooldown, you can have 100% uptime on Invoker's Energy for the spark add phase but cannot do so for Incanter's Ward. As Fire already has issues with killing the adds without lucky procs then this can become a problem.

The problem is that the buff does not last as long as the cooldown, you can have 100% uptime on Invoker's Energy for the spark add phase but cannot do so for Incanter's Ward. As Fire already has issues with killing the adds without lucky procs then this can become a problem.

It has nothing to do with luck. If you watch my elegon kill in my description. you will see that fire has no issue killing 4 sets of adds. And I proc that like a mofo. Also invocation has a 5.52 second cast time for me. That sucks. 1/10th of the time you are doing nothing. So even though it is a 25% bonus 9.25% of the time you are doing jack diddly but watching your dots tick.

---------- Post added 2012-10-05 at 02:05 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Youvegotfail

I'm not a huge theorycrafter, i normally just read guides like these and go from there. That being said I reforged to 3043 haste last night after reading that other thread and in last night's raid with the 5% buff i was at 12.52% haste, so 3043 seems to be the correct number to me.

This is my experience after clearing Mogushan Vaults as a fire mage.
I've done decently on the meters so far ranging from #1 to #50 on all bosses (At the time writing this post. Obviosly biased by the fact that not to many has cleared it yet)

I've also only tried "Rune of Power" or "Invocation". This are my choices and thoughts.

Boss - Tier6-talent
1. Invocation.
Pretty much oneshott this. But invocation seem to work. Althought you are at risk sometimes to try to time it depending on bosses abilities.

2. Invocation.
I found invocation very good on this fight. You can evocate during the earthquake thing(Which gives you 75% less hit chance)
I think invocation is better than rune here because you need to stack/spread alot.

3. Invocation.
No movement neccecary, exept avoiding totems(Rare). You should not be the one going in to clear adds.
Either will work. I used invocation. Didnt have time to try rune.

4. Invocation.
Invocation will work if you can time it right. It helps if your healers can handle the cleave with 9 persons so you can stay out.
Either way you should be able to time this.

5. Invocation/Rune of power
Either works. You only need to move out for a 0.1 sec once in a while to drop the debuff.
You can time your evocate to help healers, or you can place the rune so that you always are zone.
I went with invocation because of the hagara phase which requires movement.

6. Rune of power.
You can stay at the same position for the hole fight, exept when killing the shielded add you need to attack from behind.

Of what I plan to do for those that may be confused by alter time, he means to have you pop all your cooldown (time warp/trinks) then use it get 1-2 pyroblasts, then use alter time again to cancel it and get the durations of the cooldowns back and a free pyro. Very strong based off beta.

1. Fire mages do not get Frost Orb
2. Alter Time is best used when Hotstreak! is active.
3. To suggest that Living Bomb is on par with Frost Bomb in terms of AoE damage is wrong. If the adds can be Frozen via RoF or Nova then Frost Bomb is a 100 percent DPS increase over Living Bomb in AoE situations. In cleave (2-3 add) situations then Living Bomb is better.
4. Your Living Bomb:Combustion priority is wrong. In all situations you should refresh Living Bomb before casting Combustion unless your ignite only had 1-2 seconds left.

Suggested Talents:
Unfortunately there are some just flat out bad choices for fire.

Tier One:
Presence of Mind should only ever be taken on fights with zero movement, similarly Icy Flows should only be taken on fights with movement only every minute. This, leave us with scorch as our only real option. Scorch also has excellent synergy with fire as it also applies ignite and can trigger heating up/Pyroblast!.

Tier Five:
I never use frost bomb, in terms of AoE and single target it is just on part with living bomb, however, the long cast time and haste modified cooldown makes it feel clunky. Nether tempest is just slightly behind living bomb in terms of single target damage and way behind in terms of AoE, however it has one distinct advantage, living bomb must run its full duration to be worthwhile instead of fireball, where as nether tempest only has to be allows to run for 6-8 seconds to be beneficial so on fights like Elegon where you have to nuke down adds in this period of time nether tempest is slightly better. Which leaves living bomb my go to choice for both AoE and single target damage.

Tier Six:
A personal choice, between rune of power and Inchater's ward. With invocation being viable in theory but not practice, there are just no fights that allow for you to stand there for 6 seconds every 40 seconds on cool down with no repercussions. Rune of power is technically the best IF you never allow it to fall off and you rarely leave to rune on the ground, however, at least in Mogushan Vaults the fights have persistent movement, which leaves inchaters ward. This spell passively grants 6% damage and has decent mitigation, and since almost every fight has very predictable damage if you use deadly boss mods and such, you can regularly proc the 30% spell damage buff.

T1: All 3 are viable, Scorch most certainly "isn't our only option". Scorch has a beautiful synergy with Fire, I agree, but on fights with low amounts of movement (in MV Guards, Feng, Gara'jal, Elegon all come to mind) both PoM and Ice Floes are more beneficial. The only fight where I'd properly recommend Scorch is Spirit Kings and that's purely because of how much movement is involved in the latter stages of the fight.

T5: Nether Tempest is ahead of Living Bomb on single target damage. Bomb pulls ahead at 3+ targets.

T6: 'Invocation being viable in theory but not in practice' is (in my opinion) a flagrant lie. Invocation is perfectly viable for raiding and on my raid on Wednesday I had no trouble keeping it up at damn near 100% uptime. The only fight it dropped off on was Spirit Kings and this was only towards the end of the encounter. In hindsight I would have taken IW there but ah well, we move on. Invocation is fine, it just requires good management.

Sorry if the feedback is a little harsh to read. It's a decent attempt at a guide, but a couple of things could have been better researched and you also could have tried to keep personal bias out of it (regards to talents).

It has nothing to do with luck. If you watch my elegon kill in my description. you will see that fire has no issue killing 4 sets of adds. And I proc that like a mofo. Also invocation has a 5.52 second cast time for me. That sucks. 1/10th of the time you are doing nothing. So even though it is a 25% bonus 9.25% of the time you are doing jack diddly but watching your dots tick.

4 sets of adds is not a lot, you should be aiming for 5 or 6, we managed that pretty easily every time.
The damage of invocation is also balanced so that you do not lose DPS compared to the other talents despite the time spent channelling...

I'm sorry if you do not appreciate the advice but if you are trying to publish a public guide you need to put aside your biases and be open to criticism. Your enjoyment of invocation is irrelevant, even if you don't find it fun to play it is still a perfectly viable talent and often one that you should consider using.